RECAP: Glass ships float in the seas to the north in our world that exists after the ending of the world. The world is going through an "Edening", healing and becoming a garden before it becomes a heaven to the souls who went on before. We live here now. Different clans learned from different creatures how to survive. The people of the glass barges looked to the water. My story will start as I fall from the sky. Here I tell you how I got to the sky with my people.
To The Clouds
My clansmen looked to the skies for instruction. Twittering
flocks come and go, and just when you wonder if no wing will ever be seen
again, a flapping cloud always appears on the horizon. At first the small band wandered to high
places beyond the notice of those bickering below. The thin air seemed to accentuate the
pointlessness of wasting what little oxygen the lungs could hold on the
shouting of angry words. My clan was not
the only people looking to remove themselves from the anger in the valleys of
the world. Where others failed to escape
my fathers succeeded because they stopped trying to brace themselves against
the winds and updrafts that tore at clothes, buffeted the brow, and ripped
staked tents out of solid rock on the barren peaks. My ancestors were those that opened their
arms and let the air lift them instead of clinging to boulders. By the time the warring ways of the world
reached the mountain our clan had already floated away.
I was floating before I fell. Man cannot grow wings, but the updrafts and
currents of the world care not if you be made of feather or fur… or skin. Warm air will always rise and warmed air is
not difficult to produce, either by flame, which can consume too quickly, or by
gasses and heat produced by decaying flesh or foliage. It is not that my people fly, or never touch
ground, we simply only touch the ground lightly, perhaps with just one toe,
before letting the air lead us on another rolling trip across the sky. We feel like birds, we act like them. We take comfort in the twittering of our
loved ones to know that they are near.
We take it upon ourselves to work while others take a moment to
rest. While resting we are acutely aware
that we soon need to get back on task to give the chance to another to
rest. As such we are a strange people I
presume, never fully awake or asleep as a whole. Darkness is as much of our world as sun. We gather more than we produce, we leave
behind anything heavy, philosophically or physically. Our sky rafts are marvelous creations that have
evolved over the years. Large sales
billow above and below embracing the updraft and releasing the down. All that decays and warms the air is held on
raised platforms where the smells associated with decay can flow freely away
from the people. Those same gaseous smells
and warm currents fill our sails and keep us in the air. Sitting, laying, or in anyway adding to the
weight of the rafts for any length of time is considered foolish, dangerous, or
selfish. From infancy we are raised with
what we call wings and sails, wide as a wing is to a bird but not constructed
of heavy bone. Our wings are corded chutes
and sails that let us dance among the clouds, soaring hundreds of feet in any
direction at any time. When clouds clear
we see the world below, but typically the nebulous clouds are our floor,
keeping us separate and safe from forest and sea.
I am in the strong days of my youth, or was when I
fell. We had always been told that heavy
soil could not soar, that wet sails could not billow, and that both were likely
still poisoned still and equaled death.
Those in the strong days of youth are gatherers and tread lightly on the
boundary between good advice and adventure.
We would step off of the air rafts letting ourselves plummet toward the
earth below, scrutinizing the rapidly approaching world for glints of anything
of value or curiosity while simultaneously feeling for the draft that would
fill our sails and lead us rushing along the ground and back to the sky. To walk upon stone was rare, and unnervingly
still and dead feeling. Instead a
trinket of interest would be approached on the heady rush of the wind, grasped
by an outstretched hand and carried away on the breeze by an airman and his
chutes and wings. Heavy things have no
value, so there was never a temptation to grasp weighty treasures too heavy to
bring into the sky… but errors can be made, and gatherers in the strong days of
their youth did not always return, as is the beginning of my story.
Next Episode: The Fall